Do you think you're better off alone?

Do you think you’re better off alone? [2020]
Live DJ’d lecture accompanied by YouTube videos, originally presented on Zoom, 47 mins

Includes subtitles and audio descriptions

Emerging in the immediate aftermath of the Berlin Wall, Eurodance was born out of a period of political optimism that fuelled the golden era of Europe’s underground scene in the early 90s. Through a series of ‘close listenings’ signposted by tracks, video clips and album art, Do you think you’re better off alone? offers ways to interpret Eurodance's artefacts as both expressions of their time and portents of our contemporary political crises in Europe. The talk considers the cognitive dissonance of 90s Eurodance as a reflection of the 'split between the decade’s self understanding — how it was imagined and anticipated — and the material ways in which it was actually experienced.’*

This work was commissioned for UTOPIA, a project organised by the Royal Standard [Liverpool] in 2020. This work has been also been programmed as part of online experimental music festival VIRTUALLYREALITY SS21: The Long Triumph.

*Gavin Jacobson, “The 1990s: An age without qualities”, New Statesman.